The shady job was done.
Raen leaned back in his chair, shoulders stiff, eyes burning after hours spent patching buggy scripts and rewriting someone else's lazy code. His screen buzzed quietly, and the transaction confirmation from the freelance site blinked into existence.
[Current Lux: 3,290]
He stared at it.
"All that for three thousand Lux?" he muttered. "This world seriously hates me."
He slumped in the chair. His back ached. His fingers hurt. His thoughts were fogged from overwork and under-sleep. He'd put in nearly a full day of effort for less than what some people made in a single hour.
The phone on his desk vibrated once.
He glanced at it.
A message from an old group chat—Lost Pixels. He hadn't opened it in months. The sender was Kael.
"This just dropped. Thought of you."
Attached: a single screenshot.
Raen tapped it open without thinking.
What he saw jolted him upright.
BYTECRASHERS 7.0 — Solo Code Arena
Challenge: Build a fully autonomous AI assistant with adaptive learning, behavior modeling, and real-time interaction parsing. No libraries. No templates. Code from scratch.
Reward: 100,000 Lux
Entry Fee: 3,290 Lux
Event Begins In: 3 Days
Solo Developers Only. No Teams. No Assistance.
Hosted by VaultLayerX and SpectaCore.
Raen stared at the glowing screen, then slowly looked at his Lux balance again.
The exact same amount.
3,290 Lux.
His jaw tightened.
"You've got to be kidding me."
He stood up, started pacing the room. This wasn't some random coincidence. It felt like the universe had dropped bait in front of him—again.
"Three thousand Lux just to enter," he muttered. "They really know how to bleed you dry."
He rubbed the back of his neck, tension creeping up his spine.
But still… one hundred thousand Lux.
That kind of prize wasn't just big—it was life-changing.
He did the math in his head. In some of the lower housing blocks across Sector V, an apartment went for about 80 to 90k Lux—full ownership, no rent. If he pulled this off, he could stop living like a ghost in this decaying rental box. Get a place with real windows, maybe even hot water that worked longer than five minutes.
He stared at the screen again.
"This could be it," he said to himself. "This could finally be it."
He hesitated, just for a second. Then clicked the entry button.
[Entry Confirmed][Lux Deducted: 3,290][Remaining Balance: 0 Lux][Countdown to Event: 3 Days, 17 Hours, 42 Minutes]
Raen leaned forward, elbows on the desk, resting his forehead against his hands.
No backup funds. No room for failure.
"All in," he muttered. "All for a shot at 100k... and a damn apartment with working plumbing."